A Christmas Miracle
by Jetainia
Summary: The Time Lords don't listen to Clara and the Daleks attack. The Doctor shouldn't be alive and yet he is. (S12 Spoilers)
1. Chapter 1

He had been working in the clock tower for 300 years. He sat next to the crack in time as he worked, making toys and various gadgets. His TARDIS was somewhere out there, hopefully returning to him at some point. He had told her to return after she dropped off Clara but maybe something had gone wrong, or maybe she was just taking the long way. After all, what was time to a Time Lord and his TARDIS?

Even so, he was old now. For years he had lived in an old body, the likes of which he hadn't obtained naturally since his very first life. There was, of course, the time the Master had aged him via laser screwdriver, but according to the rest of the universe, that had never happened. At the very least, he could be grateful that he hadn't shrivelled up and shrunken to the size of a small child yet.

The crack pulsed and asked its question and he never answered. Doctor who? There was no other name for him now. Nothing following his chosen name. Once, he had had a name he carried with pride. Theta Sigma it had been at one point. But Theta Sigma was a child who ran through the halls of Gallifrey's capital instead of through the stars. He was simply the Doctor.

An explosion sounded outside and he put aside the wooden train he was carving with a small sigh. Most of the attackers had left—been defeated, grown bored, or run away, it mattered little which. But, of course, the Daleks were ever persistent. They had been created as a way to survive a nuclear war via mutation and they clung onto that decree to survive even when they had turned on their creator. He grasped his cane with a slight grimace and heaved himself up to take a look outside.

The first thing he noticed however, wasn't the Dalek ships still hovering above the planet and trying to get through Christmas' defences. It was the very familiar woman that he had sent back in time to her own planet and century. Clara was running towards the clock tower, ducking from the noise every time a shot exploded on the town-wide shields.

"Clara Oswald," he said in amazement and slightly chastising, "what are you doing in here?"

She grinned at him. "Couldn't very well let you be all on your own, now could I? Look what you've gone and done while I've been away, you've gotten old."

He smiled. He had missed her. Her and all the others he had shown the universe to. There would be no more, he knew. His time was up and even a Time Lord had to die at some point. They lived too long, in his opinion. Separated themselves from the rest of the universe and were content to merely observe instead of helping those who had so little time compared to them but used it so much better.

He looked up at the sky and saw the shield still holding, for now. He looked back at Clara and saw how she was rubbing her arms to stay warm. Content that there was no more immediate danger than usual—not that he could really do much even if there was nowadays—he chivvied her inside the clock tower and set about making cups of hot chocolate.

She was drawn to the crack in the wall-of course she was, she had travelled through his time stream, she was bound to be drawn to time crises. When she asked what it was, he just shrugged and told her. A crack in time, a remnant from an exploding TARDIS and a universe reboot. Like a corrupted save file created by a computer turning off and on again.

She could hear the question being asked and asked one in return. They didn't reply to her; of course they didn't, she hadn't answered them correctly-or at all. The Doctor answered for them.

"They're Time Lords. Waiting on the other side for me to tell them they can come out now."

"So why don't you?" she asked.

He smiled sadly. "They're safe there. Here, the Daleks and all our old enemies would attack and it would just be another war. The Great Time War part 2. It's probably selfish, but I don't want to be the last of my kind, even if the others of my kind are living in a separate bubble from this universe."

She nodded as if she understood but he knew she could only partly understand. Even she, who had lived through his timeline like he had, could never truly understand what those years of thinking he was the only one left had done to him. He covered the ache with companions, with saving the world again and again like he couldn't save Gallifrey. And then to learn that he had?

He had hated himself for so long, buried the man who had killed his own kind so deep that it was like he had never existed. And he hadn't. For at the last moment, he had stopped himself and found a new solution. But those years of pain couldn't be erased like the memory of saving his people could.

"You should go," he said quietly. As much as he loved her being here, as much as he loved her , he didn't want her to stay.

He would die and she would be stranded on a planet that wasn't her own in a time so far beyond the one she belonged to. His impossible girl. He couldn't lose her again, even if he would be the one leaving this time.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, like he knew she would.

The loud cracking of the shield stopped any plans he was forming for getting her away and home and safe. The Daleks had finally broken through and he needed to stop them. It seemed like he had been doing it all his life, from that first trip to Skaro with Susan, Barbara and Ian to now.

As long as there were Daleks to be fought and breath in his body, the Doctor would stand against the mutated creatures trapped in their metal shells. They weren't the Kaleds anymore, they hadn't been for a long time and he had given up the chance to wipe them out at their creation so now it was his duty to stand against them.

He hurried as much as he was able up the stairs of the clock tower. He may be old and relied on a walking stick more than he liked but that didn't matter. He was the Doctor and the Doctor always protects what should be protected—even the lives of his greatest enemy when they were but children.

Clara didn't follow him. She stayed next to the crack and he thought maybe she would be safe there. Maybe his kin would allow her passage and keep her safe as he had kept them safe. That would be nice of them, he thought, and hoped they would. But there was no more time to think of Clara or Gallifrey; he was at the top of the tower and there were Daleks attacking.

One last stand. That was all he had. One last stand against the Daleks and the hope that Clara and his home would be safe. That the Daleks, for some reason, would leave the people of Trenzalore, of Christmas, alone. A Christmas Miracle, perhaps.

"Oi, Daleks!" he called out. "Is it me you've been looking for? Well, here I am! Care to see if you've gotten any better at killing me yet?"

His mind was still racing through plans as he yelled, creating and discarding and creating at lightning speed. The Daleks were quicker. Beams of deadly energy headed straight for him and he couldn't duck them all. He was hit, by one or more he didn't know, didn't need to know. One hit was enough.

Below, at the base of the tower, Clara Oswald sobbed as the crack in the wall closed and the Time Lords on the other side ignored her pleas. She had tried and she had failed. She couldn't hear the Doctor calling out to the Daleks and she had heard the sound of Dalek guns firing. She raced up the stairs and there, spreadeagled on the floor, lay the Doctor. Dead. No regenerations left.

And then, light flickered over his face. She thought it a trick of her mind at first but the light didn't go away. It grew brighter, shining everywhere over his body before exploding outwards in a violent burst of healing energy. She jumped back, staring in a kind of hopeful horror at what must be an impossible regeneration.

The Doctor's eyes opened and he stood up, focused on the Dalek ships above. An arm swung to point at them and that same energy that still surrounded him flowed from his hand to the Daleks but no longer healing. It was pure, raw energy that tore through the Dalek forces and destroyed everything it touched.

When the light faded, there was no longer an old man. The Doctor stood there, looking down at himself and examining his body. He looked the same as he had when she had first met him-in her timeline anyway. There were still small bursts of light shining under his skin, glowing bright and then fading—working on healing the Doctor, on regenerating him.

'Timeless,' she suddenly thought, the word coming to her mind almost of its own accord. 'He's timeless.'


	2. Chapter 2

Gone. They were all gone but the humans that he didn't know were saved. Bill. Nardole. Both gone. Even the Master and Missy were gone. There was no one left and he was dying. The last time he died he thought it would be the final time but it hadn't been. He had regenerated. He had lived another life that should not have been his. Time Lords lived too long; he had thought. And then he had lived longer than even a Time Lord should.

Even now, dying again for the thirteenth time, he could feel the regeneration energy making its way through his body, changing cells and healing him—making him anew. It should be impossible. Why did everyone die and he kept going on? Why was it him returning to Earth and not Bill? He had no desire to live for longer than he already had.

The Doctor wanted to rest—to retire maybe. He had tried that before; it hadn't worked. Maybe this time it would. Or maybe he could force down his regeneration enough that it would take too long to remake him. Perhaps he could stall for long enough that he would be allowed to die and not return. What else was there for him to do?

He had seen the world countless times with countless people. He had saved the universe time after time, stopped monsters who never stopped coming. If, somehow, he kept going no matter how many deaths, his life would be a repeat of what it had already been. Meeting new people and loving them. Losing them.

Even Susan would be gone now. She was the first companion in a sense. The granddaughter he had stolen from Gallifrey in much the same way he had stolen the TARDIS. And she had found Ian and Barbara before she left him—or he left her, he supposed. And Romana, trapped in E-Space because she couldn't leave behind a people that needed help. He taught them too well. He showed them too much and taught them how to love, and care, and protect.

Adric had given his life for a planet not his own, in a dimension that was not his own. Nyssa had decided to stay behind and further research, Grace had become a battlefield surgeon, Sarah Jane was protecting the Earth when he couldn't with her own companions. Even K-9—every version of him—had chosen a companion to stay with and help.

Too many people died because of him. Too many people became heroes and gave their lives to save others. If he hadn't shown up, if he had just stayed away, normal people would still be living their normal lives and not spending their time running away from deadly dangers and sometimes being too slow—or turning to face the danger head on.

All his fault.

He couldn't keep doing this. It was time to end what should have ended a lifetime ago.

Except—there was Bill, or not-Bill but Bill enough to make treating her as anything but Bill difficult. And there was himself—so young and already tired of life. A soldier from World War I who had been about to die and willing to give his life for a facsimile of Bill.

And Clara. The girl who had been with him his entire life and he had erased. Too painful, he had thought. Too precious, he thought now. He carried in him the memory of all those that he had met throughout his long lives. He carried their essence and their actions in much the same way Testimony stored them in databanks so they could speak after death.

And all those memories, all those people he had met, and travelled with, and saved—they were all telling him the same thing. To _keep on going_. The universe needed him. He had tried to stop before, and it didn't work. It never worked. He was inevitable; a protector of the universe. He defended the defenceless, helped the helpless, inspired the hopeless.

He had thought of his name the last time he had died—the Time Lords demanding it from him. He had been wrong then. His name wasn't Theta Sigma like the Time Lords thought, but it also sometimes wasn't the Doctor. It was more than that. It was a meaning, a vow, spread out across the universe that would never fade. The Doctor was a name and an identifier, but sometimes, the children could hear all that was behind that word—that name.

The Doctor. Protector and destroyer. Friend and enemy. Salvation and damnation.

And now she started again. One more time. One more lifetime to spend gallivanting across the universe and helping the people she found. She shouldn't even have this life, should have been gone before she reached this point but there was always more to do. And if she was going to ignore the Time Lord law of only twelve regenerations, then she may as well throw the law of not interfering out the window too.

Though, to be fair, she had thrown that out long ago, far before the time she threw the TARDIS manual into a supernova. What was the point of rules if you couldn't break a few on the way? She was still thinking of this when she crashed through the roof of a train and then it was pushed away in favour of doing what she did best—protecting the unprotected.


	3. Chapter 3

So there it was. She wasn't a Time Lord—or, more precisely, she was the original Time Lord. A scaffolding for all of the other Time Lords she had ever known, and those she had thought long left to the past. Borusa, the Master, even Rassilon himself had come from her. A lost child fallen through a portal and experimented with and then taken advantage of.

What had she thought in those first lives when she remembered everything? Had she looked up to Tecteun as her saviour? Or had she borne with the experiments in the hopes she would be able to escape one day? She didn't know, didn't _remember_. Because they had taken it from her.

All her life she had been treated as an outcast and now to learn that she was the origin of the Time Lords… There were so many questions that were at the same time so important and so inconsequential. Nothing mattered and everything mattered. Her life was longer than she thought it was but was that really her life?

Were those Doctors she had been before truly her? She had been many Doctors in her lifetime, all of them different. The only difference here seemed to be that she didn't remember some of them. She had sometimes wished she didn't remember her past; hell, she had forced the memories of Clara out of her mind because she couldn't handle them.

The Master wanted her broken. What he failed to realise was that she had been broken and repaired so many times, one more crack didn't make the devastating impact he wanted. It hit her hard for a few moments, and then she moved on as she had learned to do. Life—especially her life—was too long to spend picking up broken pieces of herself.

She had carried the weight of genocide on her back for hundreds of years. She had carried the responsibility of saving her people for hundreds more. She had, unknowingly as it might have been, carried the genesis of the Time Lords within her longer than she thought she had lived. She was the timeless child but most importantly, she was the Doctor.

And there were more important things to focus on now. Her past didn't matter when there were cybermen overtaking Gallifrey with the Master's help. They may have lied to her, they may have experimented on her and used her for their own gain, but they were still her people—they were still _people_. And no one deserved to be turned into a cyberman.

She could think when everyone was safe and the universe saved once more.

* * *

Prison. She certainly hadn't thought she'd end up here. A cold case file that had been reopened and arrest enacted. She missed her TARDIS. It had only been a few hours but already she missed the safety and warmth of her oldest companion. Had her TARDIS always been the same? Had she stolen the same Type-40 capsule every time?

Ruth's TARDIS had held the familiar shape of a 1960's police telephone box and she had to wonder if she shared the same capsule with her past self. It was easier to call her past self Ruth; easier to distance herself away from the truth she now knew. She didn't want to think about it—though she certainly had the time to think now, she supposed.

No one would be coming for her. No one even knew where she was. Yaz, Graham, and Ryan were all on Earth, living their lives—moving on without her. She was just a blip on their timelines. Even Captain Jack Harkness wouldn't be able to find her if he went looking again. Earth was always a safe bet to check if one was looking for the Doctor, but a Judoon prison for those sentenced with lifetime imprisonment?

So it was just her. In a small box that wasn't her TARDIS. Floating in space for all eternity with no hope of getting out. The Judoon were ruthless and uncaring. They wouldn't even think of letting her out on good behaviour or some such nonsense. She was sentenced here for life and she would be staying here for life. Forever.

Even death wouldn't let her leave this place. She knew that now. She would just keep on going, keep on regenerating until the prison itself crumbled to dust from age. After that, she would drift in space, unable to go anywhere and dying every few minutes. No hope left.

One more lifetime to save the universe, she had thought. And now the universe would have to fend for itself for she could not aid it in here. She might be eternal, but she couldn't walk through walls. A few hundred years in this body and then there'd be a new Doctor—born in captivity one might say. But then, in a way, hadn't she always been born in captivity since Tecteun had taken her to Gallifrey? She had thought of the planet as her home, and the Time Lords her people, but that was all lies. Gallifrey was her prison and the Time Lords her guards—the Master her liberator.

She almost wished he'd come liberate her again—even if he just wanted to gloat that he had survived the Death Particle and she had gotten herself arrested. Her oldest friend and greatest rival. She missed him, sometimes. When memories would overwhelm her, or someone inevitably asked about where she was from.

'I'm from Gallifrey,' she'd say. Those who knew of Time Lords thought of the people who claimed to be rulers of time and watched over the universe with no intent on interfering with those they considered lesser. For no reason other than they had not been the ones to find a child on a deserted planet and take that child's biology for themselves.

She would remember the days she spent running through the halls of the Citadel. The times at the academy—or the times when she was supposed to be at the academy but had skipped off to do more exciting things with Koschei. Her Master, driven mad by time and so full of rage. Her Koschei, mischievous and always ready for a game. She would have outlived him even if he had lived the whole extent of a Time Lord's lifespan. She would have remembered outliving him.

How many more Koschei's were there in her past? How many childhood friends had she lost and forgotten? How many companions had she shown the world to and lost?

Clara had once said she had thought of her as timeless. The first time she should not have regenerated but did. When she had refused to change again until finally letting go. She had gone from looking like an ancient man to the same twenty-something-year-old looking man who had whisked her away.

Clara had known before her, before the Master, that the Doctor was timeless. That the Doctor would never go away even if the universe demanded it. As long as there was a universe, there would be a Doctor. Only now, the Doctor would be trapped in a prison instead of running around from crisis to crisis with the occasional holidays in between.

One giant break from saving the universe, just as she had always wanted. Be careful what you wish for, she thought humourlessly, you might just get it.


End file.
